Who Are We?

FreePG is a collaboration between various GnuPG downstream packagers and OpenPGP developers. These include representatives of Arch, Debian, Fedora, NixOS, Hockeypuck, and others. It is operated on a mutual-assistance basis, as specified in its governance document.

FreePG is not associated with g10code GmbH or the GnuPG project.

History

Most Linux distributions have for years manually maintained non-trivial patchsets against upstream GnuPG. FreePG is primarily a formalisation, standardisation and automation of this longstanding practice.

  • On 11 August 2015, Debian created a patch to address T1211. This patch (now catalogued as 0018) remains the oldest FreePG patch not yet merged upstream.
  • On 6th September 2022, draft-koch-openpgp-2015-rfc4880bis was (re)published, triggering the OpenPGP schism.
  • On 22nd August 2023, the librepgp.org domain was registered.
  • On 8th February 2024, it was announced that LibrePGP would not follow the IETF PQC specification.
  • On 26th June 2024, it was suggested on the tb-planning mailing list that forking GnuPG might be a backstop response to the schism.
  • On 9th July 2024, the “FreePGP” GitLab project was created as a joke.
    • Over the next few weeks, initial patches were sourced from the Arch, Debian and Fedora archives.
  • On 23rd July 2024, it stopped being funny because the downstreams were taking it seriously.
    • Over the next few months, Arch, Debian, Fedora and NixOS began aligning their existing patchsets with FreePG.
  • On 22nd August 2024, the project was renamed “FreePG”.
  • On 23rd February 2025, the freepg.org domain was registered.
  • In April 2025, the project was presented at the 9th annual OpenPGP Email Summit, when it was proposed to draw up a governance document.
  • On 26th August 2025, this website was created.
  • On 2nd November 2025, Gentoo began distributing FreePG (as a separate package).
  • On 1st January 2026, the governance model was agreed and published.

Why Is There a Goose?

The goose with the keyring was inspired by a scene in the cult classic Untitled Goose Game. Geese are intelligent social animals, and make good guard dogs.